[Previous entry: "A Harvard School Distances Itself from Dean's Paper"] [Next entry: "Rabbi Ovadia Yosef: Whoever votes for Kadima will go to hell"]

03/26/2006:

"Pat Buchanan: Are the Neocons Losing It?"

While President Bush appears serenely confident about Iraq, the same cannot be said of the War Party propagandists who were plotting this conflict when Dubya was still a rookie governor of Texas.

William Kristol of The Weekly Standard now demands the firing of Donald Rumsfeld. William F. Buckley, whose National Review branded the antiwar Right "unpatriotic conservatives" who "hate" America, now calls upon Bush for an "acknowledgement of defeat."

Richard Perle says the administration "got the war right and the aftermath wrong." Self-described "humiliated pundit" Andrew Sullivan confesses to "a sense of shame and sorrow." Michael Ledeen says of Bush's war, "Wrong war, wrong time, wrong way, wrong place."

Frank ("The End of History") Fukuyama concedes that "Iraq has now replaced Afghanistan as a magnet, a training ground and an operational base for jihadists, with plenty of American targets to shoot at."

But it is a March 20 essay in The Wall Street Journal that suggests the neocons may be coming unhinged. Written by Weekly Standard Executive Editor Fred Barnes, the piece urges Bush to begin the "rejuvenation of his presidency by shocking the media and political community with a sweeping overhaul of his administration."

The purge Barnes recommends would have caused Stalin to recoil.

Barnes calls on Bush to fire press secretary Scott McClellan, chief of staff Andy Card, political adviser Karl Rove, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Treasury Secretary John Snow – and Vice President Richard Cheney.

"The trickiest issue is how to handle Karl Rove," says Barnes.

I don't think so, Fred. I think "the trickiest issue" will be how to handle Dick and Lynne when they are told by Dubya they must give up a constitutional office to which Cheney was elected by the nation, vacate the vice presidential mansion and turn the keys over to Condi Rice.
antiwar.com